Because I just read this, I wince a little as I repost thoughts via the indubitable Jim, but time is of a premium today. Please excuse me.

Martin vs. Barack

Why is it some American’s “mythologize and sanitize” MLK – a man that called for a national guaranteed income – but as quickly abase and demonize Obama who, by the way, is a pithy moderate by comparison?

In other words, why is the socialist agenda of one leader ignored and – worse still – why is a socialist agenda fabricated and super-imposed on another?

Oh, and also, actual functioning democratic socialism (even in its sputtering form under New Labour) is a pretty good ticket.

American’s love to remind me that this was the day a very long time ago that some guys in wigs signed a piece of paper and declared independence from the British. This is pretty much true and there is a reason American children are drilled with the idealism of it all and British schools don’t cover it in their curriculum.

British schools cover the Victorian age, the industrial revolution and the subjugation of a quarter the world’s people through colonialisation (note: 19th century). When America seceded it did so from a fledgling empire, not from tyrannical brutes in Westminster.

British kids are not taught that America seceded from Britain because the Britain of the late 18th century has little relation to the Britain of today … just as the America of today has little to do with the America of 1776.

For British kids of the new millennium, America is very much its own country and they’d be surprised to hear America was ever under British rule. The Britain of George III’s rule is unrecognisable to high-school pupils of the UK. It has no bearing. To be blunt … they, we, I don’t care what happened over two centuries ago.

Listen Up! America, you’ve always been you’re own country. America is big, its own monster, fantastic, extreme. America boasts the greats of science, technology, film and gun-making in its alumni. Recognise your nation’s brilliance, but please also recognise its shortcomings.

Instead of focusing on irrelevant and ‘pseudo-mythical’ oppressors of the past, why not consider today the active and brutal oppressors in your political system today.

America is the only Western nation in the world to execute human beings.
America has 1 in 30 adults locked up in prisons (4 times the amount of any other Western state).
America’s middle class has fled to the banality of the suburbs and hung its public school systems out to dry.
America has 50 million medically uninsured people, including 11 million children.America has embraced the privatisation of prisons and stockholders profit from the incarceration of men, women and children.America’s drug war is in fact a war on the lower classes, who are predominantly minority groups.

All these are connected by hard line economics and the devastating effects promote distrust and division.

I am interested in prisons primarily because how a society treats those that transgress is a telling gauge on its wider shared cultural/political landscape.

Don’t build prisons, build schools. Don’t wage wars in foreign lands, wage war on the poverty and inequalities of your major cities. This is all simple stuff said many times before.

I apologise for this inconvenient diatribe; I don’t want to piss on your parade. In fact, I wish you had more parades. America has the fewest public holidays of any Western nation. Take a break America … love a little.

And, no, I don’t hate America … I just distrust patriotism, false mythologies and the resultant complacency. If I had the chance to decry all state-pageantry and self-congratulation, I would.

Last of all, stop allowing journo and political hacks to smear Socialism as a dirty word and system. They know bugger all. Socialism means spreading love as well as wealth. It means educating kids so that they don’t steal from you a decade later. It means providing health services NOW so that individuals can support themselves for life and the state needn’t.

President Obama emailed me today, “Two hundred and thirty-three years ago, our nation was born when a courageous group of patriots pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to the proposition that all of us were created equal”. Start putting your tax dollars where your constitution is and propagate equality. You can call it Socialism or not, I’ll just call it love.